i s.e. cupp live at hofstra university in long island. it's a high stakes second debate tonight between president obama and mitt romney. if we learned anything from denver is 90 minutes is all it takes to change the race. >> i'm toure. the revolution will be televised. if he was here he would say the revolution will be live tweeted. >> i'm chris krystal ball. can we change the process so voters get more? >> i'm steve kornacki. the candidates are getting all scientific. today the results of an election year experiment conducted by some of the smartest minds in the field. >> there's no debate about it. we have a jam-packed show from the campus of hofstra university. let's get right to it.

hey, guys. right now mitt romney is here on the hofstra campus for his walk-through. the president has done his and is finishing debate prep. for now hofstra university still belongs to the students, and they are excited. i talked to a few on campus, and i asked what they wanted to hear from the candidates tonight. one female obama supporter, who is eligible to vote in this presidential election for the first time, is a music education major. she wants to hear the president talk about arts education. she wanted to hear more on social issues like gay marriage and abortion. another obama supporter simply said, more passion, please. as for romney, spoke to a group of students representing jews for romney, and students for romney, and they wanted to hear about libya, and the economy and

the failure to lower the debt and thoeped for a denver repeat. one student said more of the same. from more passion please to more of the same, these students have high expectations tonight. with me at hofstra i wonder who they replaced me with the at the fable in 30 rock. >> this is the best week of my life. i'm happy to listen and smile. i believe the term is gloating. >> no, not the fake s.e. is it some novice, someone no one has heard of? let's take a look. >> hi, folks. >> yes, the only person they could come up with is the great legendary newsman tom brokaw. i'll take it. tom, welcome. >> well, the fact is that i've been mocked as much as you have. i was listening to you talk about hunting yesterday, and there's something else we have in common. >> well, great. >> we have a lot going on to get

started today. i was a moderator four years ago. >> let me take you back to 2008. what's it like to do it? >> well, the closest equivalent i guess is that you're in a referee and umpire in a very hotly contested game. nobody is cheering for you. they're cheering for the two candidates and the people asking the questions. the candidates have elaborate rules about how long the question should be, how they'll respond within a given time to the first question, and then how much time they have to respond to each other and they immediately break the rules. so the first that will happen tonight is candy crowley will begin to lose control of what's going on on the stage. the stakes are so high they will seize the ground for their own benefit and uses. i do think in the final analysis, however, that these are very, very useful. the country is reengaged in this campaign as a result of what happened in the first debate when romney made an unexpectedly

strong appearance, and the president made by even his strongest supporters made a very, very weak appearance in that first debate. so now folks are looking at a second time at president obama and taking a first look at governor romney. >> as the race stands, there's on no doubt it's tight and romney made up ground. two state polls caught my eye today. new hampshire according to the suffolk university, it's dead even, and quinn pack says it's he closing since the denver rate? are the debates all that influential? >> ni think they are in this case. i'm having some discussions with the obama cam pags, in which i think a lot of voter support out there is pretty soft on both sides. in other words, people for governor romney or for president obama at this point can, in fact, be moved depending on what happens in this debate and the one again next week.

we saw that last week. people who were kind of drifting toward obama then woke up and said, wait a minute. romney is a lot better than i thought he was. the president couldn't have been less impressive. >> if we could go back to your role as a moderator, you moderated the last town hall debate in 2008. what's your own sort of personal yardstick for your performance after the fact, and while you're there in the moment, john mccain was taken to task by "snl" for his wandering around the stage, and it was one of the enduring moments from the debate. do you recognize that when you're there in the chair, that that's going to be a take-away. >> yeah. this is not just because i did it. i talked to others that participated in the town hall format as well. you have a lot more to worry about than jim lehrer did last week or bob schieffer will next week. we both talked before and after the debates four years ago, and again this time. you have to worry about the people, and what happens -- i'll

take you tlhrough it. if the format stays the same, candy was given a whole stack of questions submitted by the selected respondents to a gallup poll. she picks out the one most relevant and goes into a room and meets the people face to face for the first time to ask that question on camera. we had a wonderful question from a woman that said we don't want to be on camera. you have to sort that out. you have to look at whether people can ask the question in an energetic coherent way that you want to get before the audience. four years ago i had online questions as well. they were mostly loaded up for special interest groups. now you sit down on the stage and surrounded by people to ask the questions. you have the two candidates and the stakes can't be higher for them. you keep track of the clock because you want to make sure the people that ask the question and the audience gets enough time to understand what these candidates are all about. you're juggling a lot of things. having been doing it for a long time, i was fully aware that

john mccain was walking around a lot. the now president barack obama was leaning against his chair very cool very early, because i think he thought he had a leg up and was doing well. mccain became more and more anxious during the debate and he was not happy at the end. we had as many questions they normally have in a town hall debate. i said to the commission before hand, if a follow-up is required or there is something that we can expand on the answer, i'll ask that question. i can't be alex trebek or bob barker out there. >> right, right. >> tom, i want to ask you about the psychology of the question askers at an event like this. the idea of the town hall concept in '92 when clinton insisted on it to get the voice of the average citizen in the on the debate. i wonder about this potential of a reality tv effect.

it shows average people living their everyday lives and they're conscious they're on camera and their behavior changes. you give a group of undecided voters to question presidential candidates, does their behavior change and do we get questions from them that they want asked or maybe questions that should be asked or seen asking? >> you get the questions in stra advance, so you can match the questions up with the person that's the inkwis fquititor. they're very relevant. >> did you think they're better to the questions -- >> it's a mix. it's hard to know. there was a great question at the end last year that came online. the question was from a woman in new hampshire in which she said what is it that you don't know, and how does that affect your life and how do you improve yourself? that's a great question for a presidential candidate. you could see the wheels turning. that one they didn't expect.

most of them are why can't we be more cooperative in washington between president and the congress. >> also a great question. >> it's very broadly-based. then there's a question i'm sure tonight about medicare benefits, for example. there's another question about taxes. there probably will be a question about are we going to stay in afghanistan or get out of afghanistan at some point? that's on the minds of a lot of families that have someone in the military, obviously. >> i want to step away from the debate discussion for a second, mr. brokaw. it's an honor to have you here. >> you'll get over there. >> we come out here every day as pundits or political analysts, whatever you want to call it. some people that do this are destructive to the american conversation and some are more productive or valuable to the discussion. what do we need to do when we come out here to be valuable to the discussion and not destructive to the discussion? >> try not to make it just about you. try to make it about the facts. you'll know what the people are

concerned about if you just read the papers on a daily base without looking at the polls or listen to your friends. what do they have to say? try to get outside of the new york chorus line. you know, what you want to do is hear what the rest of the country thinks as well. it's a big country, and a lot of interests are represented in a presidential debate and campaign. i got into the business because at the age of 20 i watched all night long the 1960 election returns come in between kennedy and nixon. i'd been a political junkie since the time i was 10, and i was a political science major. i thought that's what i wanted to do with my life. >> sounds like steve kornacki. >> this complex country, nation of immigrants will make a decision about who will lead them for the next four years, and we won't have tanks in the street. we we won't have the white house barricaded in some fashion. >> it's far more toxic, right?

>> it's much more polarized, and that's in part because the instrumentation makes it possible to do that. information technology and the internet. you can divide and conquer this country in a keystroke. times are tough. people didn't see the downturn coming nor did they think it would last as long as it has. the world has changed. we used to be the dominant economy. we are still number one but we see china coming up fast. people can go to the factory and get a job at an assembly line because they have good hands and a strong back, they can't get those jobs anymore. more than any time families come to me and parents and dprand parents say i'm worried my kids won't have the life i have. to some degree they probably won't have as much disposable income and they won't live in homes that aren't mcmahon shnsi.

i grew up on an army base and my moraisther raced three boys thee of this table. >> sounds like my apartment. >> i think the country is eager to do that. to kind of have a reset of values. what counts. one of my friends says we have to get up every morning and say, what do i need to do and not what do i want today? that's a good guide. >> tom, you mentioned when we tha about how we cover the presidential election, what are the issues that matter to voters and covering a broad range of topics. how do you think the debates have done thus far in covering the gamut of issues? >> i thought the first debate was pretty good. i don't think that president obama pinned down mitt romney on what he was going to do to get to that $5 trillion deficit he'll make up with the tax reformation plan. it was a wonky debate. it has oxford and cambridge rules to it.

jim lehrer said at the outset he would put out a big question. he couldn't control them when it came to time again. that's an issue. people were able it to match them up. tonight we'll have greater variety. tonight we hear more about medicare and hear more about social security and age eligibility, my guess is. how are you going to get those 12 million jobs that you have promised the american people specifically? i think the vice presidential debate is another wonky, pretty good debate. they went at each other. >> it's a fun one. >> these are two practice guys, two irish catholic political warriors. they got into the game because they love it a lot. they have more in common personally than differences, but it played out i agree with him more than i do with him. >> tom, one final question. what are the pit fafalls for ea candidate in tonight's debate? >> my guess is there will be a

surprise of some kind tonight. they're probably planning something to startle the audience or catch them off-guard or catch the opponent off-guard. the pitfalls are always the same. george bush 41 on stage with ross perot and bill clinton. our director said take a close up of george bush 41. he looked at his watch right then. that's a moment. al gore stepping in to george bush 43's space in the debate and giving a wonky commentary about job creation that i remember. there are a lot of pitfalls. it's mostly about demeanor than answers. one of the startling moments in the debate was when michael duke ki do you kak kiss was running. bernie shaw in an entirely question, you're opposed to the death penalty. if your wife was raped and

murders, would be be opposed. >> why is that an appropriate question? it forces him to mix the personal with the political. i can be pro-killing a man that rapes my wife and against the death penalty. he made them smush those together, but you think that was appropriate? >> he didn't answer it correctly. he could have said i want want to track that man with my own hands and beat him into the inch of his life. i don't think a state should take the life of another person. then you get at the complexity of that issue and the complexity of the personal decisions that have to be made when it comes to capital punishment. what dukakis did was never mentioned his wife in the course of the answer. that tells you about chakt. he was the one that said i was the guy that delivered the newspapers on time and was always in school on time. that didn't come through. the public makes a decision on

the candidates based not just on the flat form or resume or what the specifics are on the debates. at the end of the night i always say that the couple i'd like to be with are undecided, and there's sitting in their living room in ohio or in virginia or in wisconsin or any of the battleground states. one turns to the other and says, i could live with him. what do you think? most couples decide not to cancel each other's vote. so that's a big test. >> all right. >> tom brokaw, thanks again for taking a spin on "the cycle." you look good at that table, man. hope to see you again soon. up next, an honest question. what do voters actually get out of these debates? we've seen a variety of formats already, but is there an even better way? we'll explore the possibilities as "the cycle" rolls on life from hofstra university for tuesday, october 16th.

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they're the ones who weigh all of the threats and the risks and the needs and make a considered decision. >> those very candid comments is where we start off in the spin cycle. s.e., you've been following these developments very closely. >> a quick note on hillary. it was nice to take the wrap for libya, but i wonder if the supporters will appreciate that. as for tonight, i don't let romney let the president off the hook. i bet romney will find a way to question the president on his level of responsibility for libya. it could be a fireworks moment as poboth try to accuse the oth of politicizing the events. will romney look strang or will the president make romney look silly and like he's in over his

head on a serious foreign policy issue. >> on that clinton point, i think two times now in the last 24 hours where the clintons in a high profile way came to the defense of barack obama. you have hillary clinton with a statement and a new video bill clinton did critiquing the romney tax plan. this is something i don't think there's any risk of that not going over well with clinton supporters in the democratic party. this is why hillary is on popular in the democratic party. >> i don't think there's a huge divide about what happened in '08 between clinton and obama. >> as a hillary supporter, i don't feel any of that. libya is likely to come up tonight, but one of the things we're talking about is what voters are taking away from the debates and what are they looking for? tom said something interesting in the last segment. he likes to think about undecided voters who say after the debate, would i want to live with a guest?

is this someone i want to see in my living room every night. although we like to focus on the policy, it's important and we want a broad range of topics covered. if you think about the first debate between president obama and mitt romney, the big take-away was personality traits. romney seemed feisty and aggressive and the president seemed passive like he didn't really want to be there. i think mother anything voters are looking for how do i feel about these people? how are they when they're caught off-balance? i like to see questions that force them to get off their talking points and be a little bill off-balance. >> i totally agree. we were getting at that in the last segment when toure asked about the famous rape question to michael dukakis. trying to take mare of a candidate as a man or woman versus the issues. i think there's some value. here's a question i would like

to see asked. i love a moderator to step in and make mitt romney grapple with something he hasn't been forced to grapple with publicly. to prove he was pro-choice in massachusetts, he didn't just say it. he told a wrenching personal story about it, which quickly play that clip right here. this is what he said 18 years ago. >> many, many years ago i had a dear, close family relative that was very close to me who passed away from an illegal abortion. it is since that time that my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter. you will not see me wavering on that. >> he just did the opposite there of what we're talking about dukakis doing, which is to completely separate the personal from the political. romney leaned on the personal there. he changed his position when he wanted to run for president in the republican party. he has never really been forced to grapple publicly how you get from making a statement like that to saying that our

pro-life. i'd love to see somebody press him on that. >> i want to note there's a way in which the debates don't serve the american people in terms of the bifurcation. the first debate was about the economy and the third debate is about foreign policy. those two are linked. one example, iraq, that cost us $824 billion. that's a major reason we're in the recession we're in. would you like to invade iran and syria? a lot of americans might say yeah, sure, let's flex our power. also, we will be in a recession for five years and you and your family might lose their job if we do that. whoa, whoa. that completely changes the equation. we can't have the economy debate and then the foreign policy debate. they're all linked. >> all intertwined. up next, the new poll numbers, democrats, maybe now is where we get nervous. where the candidates stand going into the debate tonight. these fellas used capital one venture miles

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we're less than six hours away from tonight's main event. the poll numbers out today show how much is on the line. after a disappointing debate performance in denver, the president's lead in key swing states appears to be shrinking. as we mentioned at the top of the show the latest poll from pennsylvania shows one of the results. it shows he pulled one point of obama in likely women voters in those states.

the obama team was quick to pounce on the last stats calling the "usa today" poll flawed and inaccurate. in this guest spot today politi politico's reporter james hol n holman. they have mitt romney ahead in ten battleground states. when romney was down, all we heard from some republicans is the polls were flawed. now that gallup has romney ahead, the obama campaign is complaining about polls. how are voters supposed to make heads or tails of these numbers? >> well, the races remain shockingly static. the numbers are so stubborn. we've been polling every single week, and even before the debate it was basically what it is now. the top line number nationally not looking at the swing states, obama is still ahead 49/48. that's a statistical tie the

same as it was the week before. we're stunned at how polarized the electorate is. most have made up their minds. for example, 75% of americans think romney won the first debate, only 16% think obama did. a vast majority say it no impact on their vote whatsoever. people watch these debates as sporting events rooting for their side and not necessarily using them to make up their minds. >> technical question here, but it's something i'm struggling to figure out. maybe you can help me. we have seen the proliferation of a new type of poll in this election. we flashed it on the screen before the segment. the aggregate battleground poll. we take what we designate as 12 states and say, cumulatively these 12 states, here's what's happening. i look at that and say i do not get what the meaning or the value of the aggregate battleground poll is. i get taking the individual states. we can look back, you know, 4, 8, 12, 16 years and see how each state has evolved.

we can do the same thing with national numbers. every cycle, the battleground shifts a little bit. what does it mean to be ahead in 12 states. is there any value in the number we don't get from national and state polls? >> it's somewhere in the middle. a huge number of people in our poll are from california and new york, states that aren't competitive by population. >> more precise, but more precise in measures what? if you measure the national poll and it moves a few points, it's probably shifting across the board. what do you get more precise about narrowing it to 12 arbitrary states? >> in our case it's 10 battlegrounds we feel comfortable with. you're right. the other key point to bolster your argument is that those ten battlegrounds in terms of aggregating them have roughly tracked almost within one or two points of the national numbers. so it's pretty representative of the country as a whole, but a little bit more precise perhaps. it's one thing we look at, and

we cut and slice and dice the sample a lot of different the ways to try and find meaning in the numbers to help people make heads or tails of them. >> james, back to the gallup poll that the president's campaign is unhappy about, and i'm not a poll truther, but it's an odd result to show romney and the president running evenly with women. it sort of defies it. in fact, most other polls including the politico poll shows the president leading by double digits among women. when you see a result like that, that sort of defies logic and is out of step with almost every other poll result. what do you do with it? what do you make of it? >> the only way to solve bad polling is more polling. there's no doubt. there's no doubt romney is not tied among women. our poll has him trailing 53 to 42. that's probably about right both

nationally and in the swing states. there's a serious gender gap problem. what we noted in the poll was a shift in women's attitudes underneath the surface. they may vote for obama but the support has softened somewhat and they view mitt romney more narrowly. for the first time women don't overwhelmingly view romney negatively. he's not underwater the way he has been. a majority of women up until that debate in denver said they didn't like romney personally. they see tens of millions of dollars in negative attack ads. romney on the stage with the president, he wasn't the bad guy, the corporate raider who puts profits above people that you saw in ads all summer. he still needs to close the deal. he needs to convince people that re-evaluate him personally he's a good president. >> you sound like the kind of guy that said what this song needs is more cowbell.

the most important poll of the day we're not talking about is the psycscholastic student poll obama won that. the polls are driving the narrative rather than i go straighting it, and we're sort of driving behind the polls for the story. do you think that is destructive to the narrative in general? >> absolutely. you have to be very careful about polls and you don't want to read too much into them. they're a snapshot of a moment in time. they are important to give you a sense of where people are. you can talk to so many people in diners. it gives you a sense in aggregate of where people view candidates on the issues. going back to something tom brokaw was saying earlier, you can look at the top lines, but where i find the most value in the positivells is on the head-d measurements on the individual character issues and the bread and butter issues.

we tracked very carefully which candidate shares your values. right now obama has an advantage. another one of the things that we ask is, who is the candidate who can best get things done? romney has an edge there, and he opened it up after denver. we look at those metrics, and i think polls there do give you some good insight into the mood of voters. >> all right, james has a fever, and the answer? more polls. thank you. up next, trending this election cycle is twitter. we have a top guy to tell us how to spot the big story lines out of the debate before your friends do. wonder if he'll be my twitter buddy? [ snoring ]

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on gasoline. i am probably going to the gas station about once a month. last time i was at a gas station was about...i would say... two months ago. i very rarely put gas in my chevy volt. i go to the gas station such a small amount that i forget how to put gas in my car. [ male announcer ] and it's not just these owners giving the volt high praise. volt received the j.d. power and associates appeal award two years in a row. ♪ just like bacon makes any dish taste better, twitter makes the debates better. the sarcastic commentary, the historical perspective, the

creative hash tag and the grenade throwers. in 140 characters or less you have a shot to change the world a little. i love twitter, and inlt alone. the first presidential debate was the most tweeted event in u.s. political history with 10.3 million tweets in. 3.5 million tweets with the vice presidential showdown. 5,000 tweets per minute when biden said now you're jack kennedy. it shows how much twitter makes tv watching sbun a communal event. a national real time conversation. you hear the thoughts of thousands or millions of friends, and that has a huge impact on the national conversation about the debates. what will we be talk about tonight? we have a twitter top dog, head of government, news and social noen vags for twitter. adam, how are you? >> toure, doing well. a little chilly here in the autumn sun, but having fun so

far. >> just tweet about it, and you'll feel better. how does twitter change the discourse, and now let everybody say what they want to say whenever they want to say it? >> i think you touched on it a little bit in the intro there. it's brought us back it to a more traditional form of politics, that idea of gathering around the tv on the world's biggest couch to share in these events and having that one on one contact with candidates we seem to lose over the years. by looking at numbers, you can realize the magnitude of the conversation that is playing out around the country, around the world as we watch these debates together. >> you know, one of the things that's great about twitter is that i'm forced to talk it to non-like minds, and i think a lot of people have that experience. this is where they encountered conservatives or people from the left they don't usually meet or talk to in their real life. we get the sort tribalism that people are clearly from alternate realities and talk past each other.

there's no persuasion or a politeness in the discourse. it's just, you know, you're an idiot. no, you're an idiot. how do we deal with that as part of the way it shapes everything? >> well, i think the challenge, toure, is when you put 140 million people in one room together, you're going to get an incredible assortment of thoughts and conversation that when you just parcel out a couple of select people to appear on tv on or on talk radio you don't get. i think the key is that you have the ease of that follow button. that you follow those that you think contribute to the conversation and you don't follow those that don't. we've built a page, twitt twitter.com/ttwitter.com twitter.com/ #debates. we want to find impactful voices, the insiders on the ground to give you more perspective than the single camera on all the networks. >> i'm sure we'll be -- us

members of "the cycle" will be prominently featured there. twitter seems to help crystallize the conversation, with a c and not a k. you're no longer watch the debate in isolation forming your own opinions over a length of time. now you're on twitter seeing what everyone is thinking, the narrative takes shape quickly. members of the media are also watching that conversation, so when the debate is over and the pundits come out, they sort of know what the american public thought about the debate. everybody is on the same page right away. is that a good thing that that narrative hardens so quickly with twitter? >> well, it's a good thing that we're hearing the voice directly of the audience. think about the role the pundits play in these events. for all these years it's turning to the pundits to make their best guest what the audience thinks. now we can measure conversations that a cycle ago would have been trapped behind the walls of the coffee shop or water cooler.

being able to actually hear what the electorate is saying as opposed to the view of a single pundit or a group of people turning dials in ail hotel ballroom somewhere can be very telling. what's interesting and toure talked a moment ago that you get more talk. we saw massive amount of conversation on both sides. the peaks haven't been the big bird type moments but actually more substantive issue areas. >> what's interesting is we talk about how television ratings are going down for sitcoms, for d m dramas and other things. it isn't going down for major event television, the super bowl and oscars. with the presidential debates we had the audiences way up this year. twitter is a huge part of it. you have to be there live and want to be part of the retime

conversation. we joked about my embarrassing reply small by comparison twitter following. i can tweet a ba neenign thing it's picked up. is there a risk we're elevating, for instance, now that we have this in politics with a debate like tonight, is it too much of an event? there's too much at stake in one 90-minute event compared to the rest of the campaign just because everyone wants to watch it and thinks it's the most important thing ever? >> i think right off the bad you're absolutely right. whether it's in sports, entertainment, reality shows, politics, twitter is increasingly becoming where we come together as a community to get closer to these big events in our lives. i do think this is still important, though. this is one of the few times you have both candidates on stage together facing off with each other, having to answer the same questions back to back and letting the audience not only

follow along on twitter, but essentially ask questions. both campaigns are engaging with followers during the debates. fact checkers are chiming in, so you get a more complete pictures of the debates than ever before. the bigger that community sharing the speexperience is, i helps form a complete understanding of the issues at the end of the debate. >> adam sharp, thank you very much. you'll make us all featured tweeters, right? >> you're already featured tweeters on my list. >> that's not quite the answer i was looking for. i love you anyway. before we go, i love it when krystal says crystallized. i love it when steve is on the front page. the hometown boy does well, and he's named all the teachers who inspired him to get into politics in the headline. can we see that? it's a really good thing.

can you find it online? >> you can't. that's the future of local small town papers. they don't need to be online and have advertising. my professional start, cross-country reports from a high school team about 20 years ago now. it's great to be back. >> we are in kornacki land. up next one magazine gives the presidential candidates a science tests. who makes the grade on climate change, vaccines, stem cells and evolution? we'll tell you. [ female announcer ] ready for a taste of what's hot? check out the latest collection of snacks from lean cuisine. creamy spinach artichoke dip, crispy garlic chicken spring rolls. they're this season's must-have accessory. lean cuisine. be culinary chic.

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back now with a different kind of scientific polling. last election cycle a group of

scientists in 38,000 or so people who signed their petition argued for a presidential debate about science. as we know, that never happened. instead though, they succeeded in something slightly less ambitious. they got the candidates to submit written responses about more than a dozen top science issues ranging from space exploration to climate change to whether vaccines cause autism. then the editors graded the answers. this year it was barack obama and mitt romney's turn. they found scientific american that is, found mitt romney's science policies were more specific and more feasible than the president's but obama scored higher when it came to scientific accuracy. what has been most surprising is how anti-science politics has become and how scientific facts seem up for debate. this is happening during an election where the economy is an especially large factor. half of our economic growth since world world 2 is traced back to innovations in science. we could litigate sort of all of

the specific questions here, science questions and the fact that are being disputed. i think there's a much larger point here. it's not necessarily a new one. it's just that instead of having facts about, say, climate change inform the discussion and inform the policy making, basically we've reached a point where you have a choice. you can accept the facts and play along or you can deny the facts, you can create your own, and you're going to have a massive constituency for it. that ends up affecting the overall policy debate, and i just haven't seen a voice or an institution or a force that can cut through that and can force everybody onto the same page. it affects science and so many other issues, too. this seems to be the modern reality of our politics. >> i agree. we want science to become political because we want government to do something, to prevent and prepare for natural disasters. we want government to foster technological information, we want government to implement

policies that are informed by scientific knowledge, but i feel like part of the problem that when science becomes politicized, then both sides use it and manipulate it at times to promote an agenda that can completely subvert science. >> well, guys, coming back to the debate tonight, i put the question out to twitter, what would you -- what would you change about debates? what would you add to them? how would you modify them? overwhelmingly the response that i got was realtime fact checking. i sta rted to think about how could that actually work? the problem is as you were saying, steve, even if you had a fact checker there from politifact or fact check.org or "the washington post" or whoever it was, that would be up for debate, too. there is no person -- trust in our large institutions is at such low levels, there is no person or no thing that everyone would trust. i was actually trying to come up with if there was a crowd source way, sort of like a rotten tomatoes site for fact checking where people could log on and

say i give that a half true or a pants on fire. if i wonder if this would be actually a most trustworthy source than one individual anointed person. >> even the notion of a half truth is annoying to me. either it's true or the knotts. ultimately what we're talking about is anti-intellectualism is a virtue for many people in modern america. the idea that i'm real because i'm not swayed by what those elitists think and -- >> ivory tower. >> they talk about in harvard yard. i know what i know from my gut ergo, you can trust me. part of what it is is most people can be swayed by the idea that this study exists and there's this other study that counteracts it. doesn't matter if it's peer reviewed or if the results are retraceable. i choose to believe that study. there was a study in the past that was proven wrong so i can dismiss this study. the bible though never changes. so i can always listen to that and then we get down into the rabbit hole. >> but, you know, i think this gets to what krystal is saying.

i think the basic stumbling block is i can't think of anyone in this country who really you could say rises above the political debate, rises above the partisan polarization and can make a definitive statement about this is something we should accept as a fact as a reality, this side happens to be ride on this issue without immediately being tainted with the cry of, you know, partisanship. you think of the famous example of walter cronkite back during the vietnam war. he had the vast middle american audience and supposedly lbj decided it was doomed when he lost walter cronkite. you think about some kind of parallel example today, you know, any news person who does that, if it's inconvenient to the right -- >> you would taint them for political purposes. as you have explained before they consistently taint "the new york times" or other respectable organs so they can not have to listen to them in the future. >> right. and, you know, it's a real -- it's a real obscure point here, but, you know, there was an

election in georgia, the small country, last week. it was interesting to watch what happened there though because there is a figure in that country who rises above politics and that's the religious leader, and he managed to basically cast his lot with the opposition party and that moved voters. >> that sounds dangerous. >> a little too long. that does it for the cycle but the debate coverage, it doesn't stop. it will keep going and going and going. and going. martin bashir takes over next. [ male announcer ] humana and walmart have teamed up to bring you a low-priced medicare prescription drug plan. ♪ with a low national plan premium... ♪ ...and copays as low as one dollar... ♪ ...saving on your medicare prescriptions is easy. ♪ so you're free to focus on the things that really matter. call humana at 1-800-808-4003.

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